The four factors for employee retention: Employee retention in times of crisis

Why do people stay with a company? The obvious answer – salary, benefits, a good offer at the right time – falls short.

Research on voluntary employee turnover has yielded a remarkably consistent result for years: it is not individual measures that create loyalty, but rather the interplay of a few fundamental factors.

Meta-analyses identify four key binding factors:

• Fit for the role

• recognition

• perspective

• Working conditions

In stable times, it is often sufficient if three of these four factors are well-developed. This changes during restructuring: then they only work in combination.

Factor 1: Suitability for the role

People stay when they can use their strengths, experience their task as meaningful, and perceive the level of demands as appropriate.

The result is a feeling of self-efficacy: I can make a difference here.

This very feeling puts restructuring under pressure. Roles become blurred, tasks are redistributed, and priorities sometimes change almost weekly.

For high performers, this creates a particularly unpleasant situation: high responsibility combined with little control over their own circumstances.

Structural decisions are particularly effective here. Selection criteria should not look solely to the past – future-relevant skills and key roles must be explicitly considered.

Volunteer programs should be targeted and not applied across the board, so that high-performing employees do not leave the company more or less by chance.

And key roles should be clarified early on: Those who know they are needed in the target organization remain able to act even in uncertain phases.

After implementation, the clarity of the role work is crucial. New roles must be described, expectations clearly stated, and casting decisions made transparently.

Informal or opaque hiring processes undermine self-efficacy faster than any additional burden.

Factor 2: Recognition

Recognition includes fair compensation, but above all non-monetary appreciation: visibility of performance, honest feedback, and the tangible signal that a contribution is noticed.

In restructuring processes, this factor becomes essential rather than optional .

Many who remain are torn between feelings of guilt towards their departing colleagues, the impression of their own replaceability, and a significantly increased workload.

Anyone who takes commitment for granted in this situation will quietly lose people.

It is noteworthy that recognition also has an indirect effect here. How those affected are treated – whether there are well-prepared discussions, whether support is offered for career reorientation, and whether the farewell is handled with dignity – shapes the image of the employer among those who remain more sustainably than any internal message.

Showing appreciation for some is always also a statement towards others.

Financial incentives, on the other hand, should be treated with caution. Retention bonuses can provide short-term stability, but they cannot replace genuine appreciation.

Furthermore, they create two foreseeable problems: disappointment for those who miss out, and expectations for the following years.

They can be clearly useful in a specific situation: when employees are already leaving, but are still needed for a defined transition period.

Factor 3: Perspective

People stay when they believe in the company's strategy and see themselves reflected in it.

This factor provides what is lost particularly quickly in times of crisis: confidence.

After job cuts, the future remains abstract for many. The statement that things are now looking up again doesn't answer any of the questions that employees are actually concerned about.

It requires a vision that people can identify with – and a translation of this vision into concrete priorities for their own area.

A cost indicator cannot achieve this. It describes an intermediate step, but not a vision of the future.

Equally important is the consistency of the narrative. Contradictory or incomplete accounts destroy perspective faster than bad news that is clearly stated.

And perspective is not created through announcements, but through real tasks: new roles with substance, recognizable development opportunities and the prospect of progressing both professionally and personally.

Participation is an often underestimated lever.

Involving key personnel in the planning and implementation of restructuring fundamentally changes their role – from affected party to architect .

These people grow through the task and can subsequently act as multipliers within the organization.

Factor 4: Framework conditions

The fourth bonding factor encompasses everything that enables belonging and stability: compatibility of work and private life, flexibility, functioning relationships within the team, and emotional security.

Restructuring puts a particularly heavy strain on this area.

Teams are being torn apart, familiar contacts are missing, and cohesion is no longer a given. At the same time, the workload often increases because tasks remain even though positions are being eliminated.

The most important lever is therefore to actively limit additional strain .

Persistent overwork reliably leads to emigration – and first affects those who have alternatives in the job market.

This means prioritizing honestly and consciously omitting tasks, instead of silently distributing them among fewer employees.

In addition, the rebuilding of community also requires conscious planning.

Shared formats and rituals are not a distraction, but can be a prerequisite for new team constellations to become viable.

However, timing is crucial: A celebration immediately after the final farewells does not create a sense of unity, but rather comes across as emotionless.

A positive mood does not arise from repression, but from the ability to process experiences together.

Why the four bonding factors only work together

In normal times, a strong factor can partially compensate for a weaker one.

An exciting task can compensate for average pay. A good team can help bridge an uncertain future for a while.

This compensation works significantly less well in restructuring processes.

Those who have a clear role but see no future for the company leave.

Those who see an opportunity but feel overlooked and unappreciated may also leave.

The reason is that all four factors ultimately answer the same underlying question – and this question is constantly asked in times of crisis:

Am I still wanted and needed here – and does this company have a future in which I can participate?

The four crucial questions at a glance

For companies, the model can therefore be broken down into four practical questions:

Role suitability: Does the person know what role they have in the new organization and can they use their strengths there?

Recognition: Does she experience that her contribution is seen and valued?

Perspective: Can she see herself reflected in the company's future?

Framework conditions: Does the work environment offer sufficient stability, belonging, and resilience for the change phase?

Especially with key personnel, it is worthwhile to answer these questions not abstractly for the entire organization, but concretely on an individual level .

Conclusion: Employee retention arises from the interplay of factors.

The four retention factors are not a list of measures, but a framework for the question of why people stay .

Their practical value lies in the fact that they can be concretely assessed: Does this person know what role they have in the new structure? Do they feel that their contribution is recognized? Can they see themselves in the future of the company? And does the environment support them through the stressful period?

Anyone who can answer these four questions for the organization's key personnel has done more than most retention programs.

Those who cannot answer them may find out the answer later – but then from a termination notice.

Where Restart Career supports

Restart Career supports companies undergoing restructuring by providing career assessment and coaching for high performers , support for managers, and appreciative outplacement for affected employees .

This allows companies not only to shape the necessary transformation, but also to create the conditions that enable important employees to experience perspective, orientation and belonging even in uncertain phases.